The government’s indirect tax collections in the current financial year ending March may fall short of the Budget target by around 280-300 bln rupees even after resorting to measures like going slow on duty drawback to exporters, a finance ministry official said.

According to revenue department’s internal projections, at the end of November, indirect tax collections were 414 bln rupees below the target, the official said.Though the actual shortfall in collection could be in the order of 600 bln rupees, the department hopes to cut it by half through speeding up recovery of arrears, greater scrutiny, sale of confiscated goods and going slow on duty drawbacks to exporters, the official said.“With additional resource mobilisation coming into force, the estimated gap of 600 bln rupees by March end, can be reduced by half. We are going to cross 5 trln rupees in collections normally, but after that the measures will be used to scale up collections,” the official said. The Budget had projected indirect tax collections at 5.650 trln rupees, up 20.3% from revised estimate of 4.695 trln rupees last year. -Cogencis

At the end of November, the indirect tax collections rose by 4.9% to 3.076 trln rupees.During Apr-Nov, excise duty collections declined 5.1% to 1.036 trln rupees. The Budget had projected excise mop-up to rise 14.9% to 1.976 trln rupees in 2013-14.